The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way

“For better or worse, English has become the most global of languages, the lingua franca of business, science, education, politics, and pop music.”

Lingua franca is a term that refers to a common language being adopted by groups of diverse people who speak different languages. Bryson explains that English has become a lingua franca internationally because it has been adopted by many facets of business, education, and politics. For example, English is the agreed international language of discourse among almost all airlines across the globe.

“One of the greatest mysteries of prehistory is how people in widely separated places suddenly and spontaneously developed the capacity for language at roughly the same time.”

In Chapter 2, Bryson examines the dawn of language and how prehistoric humans developed the ability to communicate through language. Bryson’s theory is that after the evolutionary change which pushed humans’ larynx deeper into the throat, verbal sounds became commonplace and the formation of languages sprung from “spontaneous utterances of alarm, joy, pain, and so on” (17).

“The Romance languages are not the outgrowths of the elegant, measured prose of Cicero, but rather the language of the streets and of the common person, the Latin vulgate.”

In closing Chapter 2, Bryson explains that Latin evolved into the Romance languages of French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian. These languages were influenced and adapted in speech and grammar by the vulgate, or common people, rather than the upper class.

“All languages have the same purpose—to communicate thoughts—and yet they achieve this single aim in a multiplicity of ways.”

In beginning Chapter 3, Bryson explains the ways that various languages differ while accomplishing their shared goal—communicating thoughts. He argues that “there is no feature of grammar or syntax that is indispensable or universal” (29). Languages vary in dealing with matters of grammar such as case, tense, gender, and number. While some languages feature basic grammatical features, others are complex.

“All the evidence suggests that minority languages shrink or thrive at their own ineluctable rate. It seems not to matter greatly whether governments suppress them brutally or support them lavishly.”

In Chapter 3, Bryson discusses how minority languages—such as French in Canada, Basque in Spain, and Gaelic in Ireland—have been either suppressed or supported by the government. In Canada and Spain, suppression led to bitter conflict, as their minority languages shrunk but survived. In Ireland, the government strongly promoted Gaelic, but it has continued to shrink.

“In only a little over a hundred years England became a center of culture and learning as great as any in Europe.”

In Chapter 4, Bryson traces the development of English following the withdrawal of Roman troops and invasions by Germanic tribes. The development of literacy soon followed: Bryson states that “Christianity quickly spread over the island, towing literacy in its wake” (47).

“It is a cherishable irony that a language that succeeded almost by stealth, treated for centuries as the inadequate and second-rate tongue of peasants, should one day become the most important and successful language in the world.”

In this quote, Bryson refers to the fact that, following the Norman invasion of Britain, the English aristocracy spoke French while commoners spoke English. Matters of court required French, yet most spoke English—contributing to its spread.

“No other language has so many words all saying the same thing. It has been said that English is unique in possessing a synonym for each level of our culture: popular, literary, and scholarly—so that we can, according to our background and cerebral attainments, rise, mount, or ascend a stairway, shrink in fear, terror, or trepidation, and think, ponder, or cogitate upon a problem.”

Bryson argues that English has countless synonyms for virtually every word, a feature that other languages lack (as some languages comprise less words with more specific meanings). Sometimes, one’s choice of synonyms speaks to their area of expertise or level of education.

“If there is one thing certain about English pronunciation it is that there is almost

nothing certain about it. No other language in the world has more words spelled the same way and yet pronounced differently.”

In Chapter 6, Bryson points out some of English pronunciation’s many peculiarities. One peculiarity is words with an identical combination of letters being pronounced differently, such as “low” and “how”

“Spelling and pronunciation in English are very much like trains on parallel tracks, one

sometimes racing ahead of the other before being caught up.”

In this quote, Bryson refers to English pronunciation and spelling changing over time. An example of this includes the evolution of verb forms in the 16-17th centuries, when “hath” became “has” and “doth” became “does”.

“Dialects are not just matters of localities and regions. There are also occupational dialects, ethnic dialects, and class dialects. It is not too much to say, given all the variables, that dialects vary from house to house, indeed from room to room within each house, that there are as many dialects in a language as there are speakers.”

According to 20th century linguist Mario Pei, “no two people in any language speak the same sounds in precisely the same way” (115). This is why we can recognize people by their voices (115). Dialects within a language can provide clues as to where someone is from and perhaps their ethnicity, class, and even religion.

“With all their grammatical intricacies and deviations from standard vocabulary, dialects can sometimes become almost like separate languages. Indeed, a case is sometimes made that certain varieties are separate languages.”

Bryson discusses three varieties of English which might be considered separate languages. Two in America include Cajun (a French-English hybrid spoken in Louisiana) and Gullah (which is spoken by some descendants of enslaved African peoples living on the islands of Georgia and South Carolina). In the United Kingdom, Scots is a variety of English spoken in the Lowlands of Scotland.

“Spellings in English are so treacherous, and opportunities for flummoxing so abundant, that the authorities themselves sometimes stumble.”

In this quote, Bryson refers to many words in English being spelled differently—even by important lexicographers. He discusses words like “millennium” (which was misspelled in the second edition of Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language) and “vichyssoise” (which was misspelled in the first edition of the American Heritage Dictionary).

“An odd fact of spelling from earlier times is that although writing must have been a laborious affair there was little inclination to compress words or simplify spellings—indeed, by all evidence, the opposite was the case.”

Bryson argues that the spelling of many words in English could have easily been shortened while also becoming more phonetically sound. For example, he cites some writers habitually spelling words such as “it” as “itt” and “not” as “nott” despite the extra letters not adding much substance.

“Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football. It is a patent absurdity. But once this insane notion became established grammarians found themselves having to draw up ever more complicated and circular arguments to accommodate the inconsistencies.”

In Chapter 9, Bryson argues that English’s complications stem from it being based on Latin. Grammarians tended to establish rules that conformed to the rules of Latin, even when they were illogical (and less cohesive to the whole of English).

“One of the undoubted virtues of English is that it is a fluid and democratic language in which meanings shift and change in response to the pressures of common usage rather than the dictates of committees.”

Bryson argues that the constantly changing nature of English “is a natural process […] To interfere with that process is arguably both arrogant and futile, since clearly the weight of usage will push new meanings into currency” (159). Much of Chapter 9 focuses on English having no academy or other organization that governs grammar and spelling the way some other languages do. Because of this, Bryson describes English as democratic, changing and evolving based on common usage.

“In short, dictionaries may be said to contain a certain number of definitions, but the true number of meanings contained in those definitions will always be much higher.”

Bryson points out that many words have multiple meanings which are not officially recognized and defined as such in dictionaries. He presents the word “keep” as an example, which is typically defined in dictionaries as “to retain”—but English-speakers seldom use the word this way (i.e., “keep smiling”) (165).

“The first American pilgrims happened to live in the midst of perhaps the most exciting period in the history of the English language—a time when 12,000 words were being added to the language and revolutionary activities were taking place in almost every realm of human endeavor.”

The revolutionary activity which Bryson refers to is the pilgrims physically moving away from Britain and symbolically moving away via changed speech. The pilgrims were the first generation of Americans to use the “s” form of verbs, saying “has” rather than “hath” (177).

“It would be a mistake to presume that English is widely spoken in the world because it has some overwhelming intrinsic appeal to foreigners. Most people speak it not because it gives them pleasure to help out American and British monoglots who cannot be troubled to learn a few words of their language, believe it or not, but because they need it to function in the world at large.”

In Chapter 12, Bryson examines the extent to which English has become a global language. While the teaching of English has become a billion-dollar industry and English newspapers, advertisements, and labeling are found everywhere, it is also true that people prefer to read, watch television, and listen to music in their own language. The spread of English has taken place out of necessity more so than personal preference.

“Names are in the most literal sense big business. With the increasing globalization of commerce, it is becoming harder and harder to find names that are both inoffensive and pronounceable throughout the world.”

According to Bryson, an exorbitant amount of money and effort are put into the naming of products. The reasons for this are not only economic (meaning that sales improve when a name is favorable to consumers), but logical—a way to avoid financial disaster when translations from language to language are inaccurate.

“Swearing seems to have some near-universal qualities. In almost all cultures, swearing involves one or more of the following: filth, the forbidden (particularly incest), and the sacred, and usually all three. Most cultures have two levels of swearing—relatively mild and highly profane.”

Although not all cultures use swear words, most do and have for centuries. The commonality of swear words’ meanings has not changed, the source of swearing—filth, the forbidden, or the sacred—typically determining the level of offensiveness.

“Unlike American crosswords, which are generally straightforward affairs, requiring you merely to fit a word to a definition, the British variety are infinitely more fiendish, demanding mastery of the whole armory of verbal possibilities—puns, anagrams, palindromes, lipograms, and whatever else springs to the deviser’s devious mind.”

Chapter 15 focuses on wordplay, with crossword puzzles being among the most popular games of this ilk. Bryson describes the difference in American and British crosswords as not only being a matter of difficulty but the speed at which a person can conquer them.

“Perhaps a more pressing concern ought to be not with the English used by Hispanics and other ethnic groups so much as the quality of English used in America generally.”

In this quote, Bryson refers to the lobbying group called “U.S. English” which emerged during the 1980s with the mission of making English the official language of the United States. The group came about due to concerns that Spanish and other foreign languages were becoming “too prominent” in the country. Bryson’s implication is that the bigger concern for native-speaking citizens should have been high school students’ poor English test scores at the time.